Life Choices

Happy pictures make serious posts happier, right? One let's get this started on the right foot then.
Speaking of re-do's and regrets and what ifs, has anyone else seen the Adjustment Bureau? Not only is it a really well-done movie, but those what-ifs are a major theme in the movie. What was meant to be? No matter what? What say do we have in our destiny? How is our fate determined? etc. Pretty thought-provoking, especially in the context of this latest blog prompt.

Like all of us, I don't like dwelling on my regrets. Sometimes I behaved poorly, stupidly, weirdly, etc, but that's what I did and thinking about how retarded that must make me will not help. But I don't have too many official things I'd rather do over, just those 'what-if's. The biggest (and only, at this young point in my life) what-if revolves around moving to Indiana to attend IPFW.

I'm not sure you guys have any idea how much shame and humiliation I felt graduating high school as the Valedictorian without any college plans. I felt like I was letting everybody down, like all those people who expected so much of me would be disappointed and see the 'real' loser Liberty was. ((SIDE BAR- maybe I should follow Pop's line of thinking and keep some things in person, but then again, I'm trying to follow my own advice and be more honest which is a lot easier for me to do here than in person)) What if I had gone to University of Chicago? Or anywhere else? IPFW doesn't have the best reputation locally, although I had no idea of that when I moved out here, and things on campus have changed a lot, making some of those stereotypes outdated and unfounded. Still, it felt like I was crawling away from NJ to go to some school no one had ever heard of, simply because they were still accepting applications without an essay in June. But (and I've written a whole paper on this experience, so I've thought about it a lot) what if I hadn't?!? What if I hadn't moved here and hence had never met Brandon??! I feel like both Brandon and I had to suffer so much prior to meeting each other- being humbled to dangerous levels of self-loathing to get here- leads me to believe it was JUST THAT IMPORTANT that we find each other just then. We needed to meet each other in Fort Wayne at that exact moment, which required me to choose IPFW as an embarrassing last resort and Brandon to flee BYU and head back home. This is where I think of that movie. Is there anything I could have done to keep me from ending up here in FW? Or was it bound to happen no matter what? Believing that relieves some of my guilt and makes me feel better about ending up here. Maybe nothing I could have done would have kept me from ending up in IN that fall. And even if there was something, it wouldn't be worth losing Brandon. ... ... ... But that doesn't mean I don't occasionally have selfish thoughts about how my career might be different had I attended a more prestigious school. Then I see Brandon and remind myself this is the ultimate prize. A fantastic marriage with a wonderfully kind loving honey. We are blessed. It was worth it. And I would do it again.

I love you Brandon.
Anyway, this has been Liberty, shedding a few layers for you. Be kind. :]

PS- I'm writing this in the school library, as I prepare wait for the last final of my undergraduate degree. Wish me luck!!

Regrets, Re-Do's and Do-Overs

Pick a card, any card. As person with more years under my belt, I have a plethora of regrets to choose from. One of them which has needled me over the years concerns our foreign exchange student Yoko who lived with us in Tennessee. This was the year that Jane Westmoreland May decided she was going to be a foreign exchange student group leader and get all of these students placed in houses and we were going to be one of those houses. We chose one from Japan because Benet spoke Japanese and we got Yoko. Yoko was a spoilt "only" child coming from an affluent family whose parents were older. Because of this, she believed that we were not old enough or experienced enough to be parents. She was rude to us and disobeyed my instructions. I tried very hard to give her a good American experience with an American family. She told all of her friends at school that the only reason we had her was so that we could have a live-in babysitter, she was mean to my children and (horror of horrors) broke our stereo. Interestingly enough, all of the Japanese students that came over that year were little SNOTS and did not last with their families longer than 3 or 4 months. Yoko lasted 8 months with us before I finally broke and said she could no longer stay with us. I had always regretted not being more compassionate and better able to endure her in our home. But... I was really really glad when she left.